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The Big Story: The outsider

Delivering a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, on Tuesday, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi slipped into his favourite role: that of the “reluctant politician”, of the outsider looking in. Asked about dynastic politics, he reportedly said that is how things worked across organisations in India, from political parties to industrial empires. He is then believed to have said, with some drollery, that while some in the Congress did not come from dynasties, others happened to have had a father, grandmother and great-grandfather in politics. “Not much I can do about it,” he said.

Gandhi’s remarks now, good humour notwithstanding, are reminiscent of the sentimental speech delivered to Congress followers in 2013, when he declared that “power is poison”. That was when he was anointed Congress vice president, and not many outside the party were convinced by the image of the noble scion forced to take up the mantle reserved for him. In the four years since then, he has done little to correct the systemic flaws of the party he inherited, let alone the politics he joined.

As Gandhi points out, the Congress stopped having the “conversation” that parties need to have, both within the organisation and with the electorate, sometime in 2012. The Congress Working Committee, once a forum for political brainstorming, is now irrelevant, according to observers, and the party’s decision-making mechanisms remain opaque and centralised. While senior party leaders believe the party should be expanding its base and firming up its internal structures, the Congress’s election strategy in key states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh has been to tie up with regional parties in the hope that it will boost its appeal to a frankly disenchanted electorate.

In the lead up to polls in Assam, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s regional offices bustled with activity while most of the Congress leadership departed for Delhi to take orders from the high command. Even now, many question the wisdom of Gandhi’s two week tour to the United States on the eve of the Gujarat elections. Meanwhile, BJP president Amit Shah, immediately after engineering a spectacular election victory in Uttar Pradesh, started planning a countrywide tour to meet booth-level workers. In state after state, the BJP has reached out, projecting itself as an attractive political prospect, picking off many of the Congress’s own local leaders. The grand old party seemed to have folded into itself, growing increasingly insular, offering few channels for the political ambitions of leaders outside the established dynasties.

Gandhi can no longer pretend to be powerless in the face of a ruthless political machinery. As the anointed leader-in-waiting for years now, he has set the tone of the party and has a considerable say in how it functions. Contrary to his claims at Berkeley, there is much he can do about it.

The Big Scroll

Anita Katyal writes how the Congress Working Committee meets have been hollowed out. She also points to the difference in the way Amit Shah and Rahul Gandhi are preparing for the Gujarat elections.

Rohan Venkataramakrishnan on the long wait for Rahul Gandhi to become Congress president.

Punditry

In the Indian Express, Ravi Nair points out that Delhi is impervious to the United Nations’ criticism about its stance on the Ronhingya issue.

In the Hindu, C Rangarajan on the course correction the Indian economy needs.

In the Telegraph, Samantak Das on the dangers of silence, in both India and the United States.

Giggles

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Deepanjan Ghosh writes about the misdirected anger against a Jawed Habib advertisement for Durga Puja:

“Bengali children grow up with stories of Durga slaying Mahishasur, the demon who took the form of a buffalo. Durga’s children are treated more like distant cousins than distant gods – each has a distinct character. Ganesh is the plump, obedient, occasionally mischievous, child who is bullied by others. Kartik is always nattily dressed, and perhaps a little vain. Lakshmi is the naughty one and Saraswati the studious, serious one. If one were to think of gods as family, it would logically follow that one could sometimes josh with them, the way Bengalis are known to do.”

Tracing the formation of Al Qaeda and its path to 9/11

A new show looks at some of the crucial moments leading up to the attack.

“The end of the world war had bought America victory but not security” - this quote from Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book, ‘The Looming Tower’, gives a sense of the growing threat to America from Al Qaeda and the series of events that led to 9/11. Based on extensive interviews, including with Bin Laden’s best friend in college and the former White House counterterrorism chief, ‘The Looming Tower’ provides an intimate perspective of the 9/11 attack.

Lawrence Wright chronicles the formative years of Al Qaeda, giving an insight in to Bin Laden’s war against America. The book covers in detail, the radicalisation of Osama Bin Laden and his association with Ayman Al Zawahri, an Egyptian doctor who preached that only violence could change history. In an interview with Amazon, Wright shared, “I talked to 600-something people, but many of those people I talked to again and again for a period of five years, some of them dozens of times.” Wright’s book was selected by TIME as one of the all-time 100 best nonfiction books for its “thoroughly researched and incisively written” account of the road to 9/11 and is considered an essential read for understanding Islam’s war on the West as it developed in the Middle East.

‘The Looming Tower’ also dwells on the response of key US officials to the rising Al Qaeda threat, particularly exploring the turf wars between the FBI and the CIA. This has now been dramatized in a 10-part mini-series of the same name. Adapted by Dan Futterman (of Foxcatcher fame), the series mainly focuses on the hostilities between the FBI and the CIA. Some major characters are based on real people - such as John O’ Neill (FBI’s foul-mouthed counterterrorism chief played by Jeff Daniels) and Ali Soufan (O’ Neill’s Arabic-speaking mentee who successfully interrogated captured Islamic terrorists after 9/11, played by Tahar Rahim). Some are composite characters, such as Martin Schmidt (O’Neill’s CIA counterpart, played by Peter Sarsgaard).

The series, most crucially, captures just how close US intelligence agencies had come to foiling Al Qaeda’s plans, just to come up short due to internal turf wars. It follows the FBI and the CIA as they independently follow intelligence leads in the crises leading up to 9/11 – the US Embassy bombings in East Africa and the attack on US warship USS Cole in Yemen – but fail to update each other. The most glaring example is of how the CIA withheld critical information – Al Qaeda operatives being hunted by the FBI had entered the United States - under the misguided notion that the CIA was the only government agency authorised to deal with terrorism threats.

The depth of information in the book has translated into a realistic recreation of the pre-9/11 years on screen. The drama is even interspersed with actual footage from the 9/11 conspiracy, attack and the 2004 Commission Hearing, linking together the myriad developments leading up to 9/11 with chilling hindsight. Watch the trailer of this gripping show below.

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The Looming Tower is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video, along with a host of Amazon originals and popular movies and TV shows. To enjoy unlimited ad free streaming anytime, anywhere, subscribe to Amazon Prime Video.

This article was produced by the Scroll marketing team on behalf of Amazon Prime Video and not by the Scroll editorial team.